Friedrich Nietzsche

Name:	Friedrich Nietzsche
Date of Birth:	October 15, 1844
Occupation:	Philosopher
Ethnicity:	German

Friedrich Nietzsche is an extremely influential 19th-century German philosopher and protocel. While initially a nihilist, being a strong critic of traditional religion and other systems that propose an objective basis for morality, he eventually developed a "new" form of ethics based on overcoming weakness. His maxim of the eternal return posits that people should make decisions that result in a beautiful life that they would want to live for eternity.

Failed Romantic life

He was rebuffed by every woman he approached and never had a genuine romance. There have been predictable claims that he was homosexual in light of his lifelong bachelorhood, though there is no convincing textual or biographical evidence supporting this assertion.

Syphilis claims

Likely owing to the controversial nature of his philosophy, several wild claims about Nietzsche's sexuality were made after his death. One of the most prominent claims is the idea that his late-life insanity was attributable to syphilis induced dementia. In 1902 the German neurologist Paul Möbius published an influential but likely spurious case study of Nietzsche's mental health entitled "Nietzsche's Pathology" that claimed he died from syphilis he contracted from a hooker at a brothel. Nietzsche did receive a contemporary diagnosis of advanced syphilis after a mental breakdown that resulted in his admission to a sanitarium in Switzerland. Dr Leonard Sax, who authored a study regarding Nietzsche's death, has criticised this initial diagnosis. Sax concluded Nietzsche likely did not have syphilis as there were no tests for syphilis during his lifetime, and he did not exhibit most of the symptoms of late-term syphilis. Nietzsche also lived far longer after his 'diagnosis' than one would expect for a terminal syphilis patient (more than a decade). An autopsy was never conducted on his body, and thus the cause of his death is ultimately unknown.

In more recent times, this claim was echoed by the psychiatrist Wilhelm Lange-Eichbaum, a fierce critic of Nietzsche's life and work. Lange-Eichbaum claimed Nietzsche's philosophy deserved partial responsibility for crafting the ideological underpinning of the Nazi movement and the Holocaust, despite Nietzsche vocally being largely opposed to the anti-semites of his era and certain beliefs of the Völkisch nationalists of his time, including his sister Elisabeth, who notably attempted to create a 'racially pure' and 'Jew free' settler colony named Nueva Germania in Paraguay together with her husband Bernhard Förster.

Alleged incest

In 1951 a book was published entitled "My Sister and I" that was ostensibly based on a manuscript written by Nietzsche in 1889-1890 during his stay in a mental asylum. Written in a similar tone and style to his other works, the book claims that Nietzsche had an incestuous sexual relationship with his sister Elisabeth and an affair with Cosima Wagner, the famous German composer Richard Wagner's wife (the latter claim being mirrored elsewhere). The work, sensational on its release, is widely considered to have been, in reality, authored by Nietzsche scholar Oscar Levy, though Levy's daughter denied this. The text contains several anachronisms that make it unlikely it was written by Nietzsche, and the text is generally dismissed by scholars as merely being a vulgar, pulpy forgery, though a minority claim it is authentic.

Purported sexual relationship with Cosima Wagner

During his lifetime Nietzsche had a close personal relationship with the German composer Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima (the daughter of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt), a relationship that soured significantly towards the latter stages of his life.

Nietzsche engaged in heavy simping on behalf of Cosima, despite her being married, and frequently brought gifts for her, chaperoned her, and even wrote poems and love letters in her name, with Nietzsche later proclaiming Cosima as his "wife" during his delerium before his death. Nietzsche's clear romantic feelings for Cosima have led to claims that the relationship between the two was overtly adulterous, especially in light of the later fierce rivalry between Nietzsche and Richard Wagner. This rivalry was previously believed to be primarily brought about by Wagner's late-life Christian turn, as revealed by the Christian themes of his famous opera Parsifal, which irritated Nietzsche greatly, as he despised Christianity and its 'slave morality' exalting the weak and humble. Nietzsche accused Parsifal of resulting from Cosima's 'corruption' of her husband's worldview, indicating the ambivalent nature of his feelings towards her. Others have attributed the rupture in their previously close relationship to a letter Wagner wrote to a doctor (who later treated Nietzsche and revealed this to him) in which Wagner hypothesized that the cause of the various ailments that dogged Nietzsche throughout his life was chronic masturbation. The contents of this letter reportedly caused Nietzsche to erupt in a rage against Wagner.

Cosima's private diaries reveal her initial polite fascination and later contempt concerning Nietzsche and do not provide any evidence of his romantic interest in her being reciprocated to any serious degree.

Misogyny

His writings contained many misogynistic phrases, some would argue stemming from the many rejections he experienced at the hands of women.

Quotes on women

"From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than truth—her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty"

"Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game woman is a mediocre player."

"Woman has so much reason for shame; so much pedantry, superficiality, schoolmarmishness, petty presumption, petty licentiousness, and immodesty lies concealed in woman."

"Everything about woman has one solution: that is pregnancy."

"Woman's love involves injustice and blindness against everything that she does not love... Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or at best cows."

"Woman! One-half of mankind is weak, typically sick, changeable, inconstant... she needs a religion of weakness that glorifies being weak, loving, and being humble as divine"

"When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexuality"

"In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man."

"A little woman pursuing her vengeance would force overtake even Fate itself."

"Women can enter into a friendship with a man perfectly well, but to maintain it- a little physical antipathy is required."

"When thou goest to thy woman, do not forget thy whip."

"Women are considered profound. Why? Because we never fathom their depths. But women aren't even shallow."

"What inspires respect for woman, and often enough even fear, is her nature, which is more “natural” than man’s, the genuine, cunning suppleness of a beast of prey, the tiger’s claw under the glove, the naiveté of her egoism, her uneducability and inner wildness, the incomprehensibility, scope, and movement of her desires and virtues."

"From a woman you can learn nothing of women"

"Young women try hard to appear superficial and thoughtless. The most refined simulate a type of impertinence. Women easily experience their husbands as a question mark concerning their honor, and their children as an apology or atonement. [...] In sum, one cannot be too kind about women."

"All women are subtle in exaggerating their weaknesses; they are inventive when it comes to fabricating their weaknesses in order to appear as utterly fragile ornaments who are hurt by even a speck of dust. Their existence is supposed to make men feel clumsy, and guilty on that score. Thus they defend themselves against the strong and the "law of the jungle."

But the man who is not superficial, who has depth of thought as well as of purpose, the depth which not only makes him desire right but endows him with determination and strength to do right, must always look on woman from the oriental standpoint:- as a possession, as private property, as something born to serve and be dependent on him ... What a necessary, logical, desirable growth for mankind! if we could only attain to it ourselves!

Stupidity in the kitchen; woman as cook; the terrible thoughtlessness with which the feeding of the family and the master of the house is managed! Woman does not understand what food means, and she insists on being cook! If woman had been a thinking creature, she should certainly, as cook for thousands of years, have discovered the most important physiological facts, and should likewise have got possession of the healing art!

Would any link be missing from the whole chain of science and art, if woman, if woman's work, were excluded from it? Let us acknowledge the exception—it proves the rule—that woman is capable of perfection in everything which does not constitute a work: in letters, in memoirs, in the most intricate handiwork - in short, everything which is not a craft; and precisely because in the things mentioned woman perfects herself, because in them she obeys the only artistic impulse in her nature, which is to captivate.

"If the discontented, bitter and grumbling-heads were denied reproduction, the earth could be enchanted into a garden of happiness. -This one rule belongs in a practical philosophy for the female sex."

—Human, All Too Human

Blackpilled quotes

"Sometimes a pair of thicker glasses is enough to cure the lover; and whoever had the power of imagination to picture a face, a figure, twenty years older, would perhaps go through life very undisturbed."

—Human, All Too Human

See also

• Timeless quotes on women
• Otto Weininger
• Arthur Schopenhauer